In the Night (Darkness Falls Book 1)

by Melissa Sinclair

  “I wasn’t blind, not entirely. At least, not to the way she treated you. I mean, I didn’t think she hated you. I just thought she was indifferent. But, Kara, she literally hates you.”

  “I know,” Kara said, and the tears that Caleb knew she had kept at bay so that her mother wouldn’t see them, began to flow. “But, why? What could I have ever done to warrant such hatred? I did everything they ever asked, everything they ever wanted, and this is the way they feel about me? I would understand if I was a t-terrible person.” She was sobbing now, and Caleb spun her around and tucked her into him.

  He looked at Ethan over the top of her head, and his eyes said it all. Ethan was on the same page as Caleb. If either one of them could get away with it, they would teach Stanley and Constance Vanderbilt a lesson. For now, they had to be happy with doing what they could to take down a governor. Caleb knew they would eventually accomplish that goal; they just had to be patient.

  “Kara, I am so sorry.” Ethan’s eyes were glistening, too, and Caleb discreetly looked away, not wanting to make him feel uncomfortable. He guided Kara to Ethan’s bed and let her go so she could sit by him. It tore him apart to see her lay her head on the bed and watch Ethan stroke her hair. “They will pay. I will make sure of it.”

  “I am not glass. I am not glass. I will not break. I may bend, but I will not break. This will not define me.” Kara whispered the mantra over and over until her voice became less clogged with tears and stronger with every word. “They both can get fucked, for all I care about them. But, yes, they need to be removed from power. That man has no business being in the position he’s in.”

  “All it takes is one well-placed article in a very well-known newspaper. We just have to find someone willing to print it and we can force him to step down. Judging by the dark rings around his eyes, he isn’t sleeping much these days. I think the guilt is getting to him. Not her, your mother …”

  “I know. She’s pretty reprehensible,” Kara said. “I almost feel bad for him. He always seemed like he was a strong man. But he’s just a spineless piece of crap. Maybe he loved me at one time, but I can’t see it now. There’s no love there; it dried up and died the night he was complicit in not paying the ransom.”

  “We really don’t need a statement; it doesn’t appear this affects the case now. But, if you want to, we’ll certainly take it. I don’t think there’s any kind of crime we can charge them with. The statute of limitations beyond passed on any charge we could have come up with.”

  “If you had died, I would have never known how terrible they are. Thank God that you didn’t,” Ethan said.

  “We can still do a lot of damage by my just making a statement, especially if it were to get leaked. So, let’s do it.”

  Caleb hustled into the room five minutes late. All eyes turned to him. He had called the meeting, but they hadn’t expected being delayed at the hospital. He was dreading this meeting. On the way over, he held Kara’s hand, and while he’d wanted to withhold how Kara had found out about her parents’ deception and their subsequent destruction of evidence, she had done the right thing, the honorable thing, by deciding to come and put it in writing.

  The man who had abducted her was dead and buried, so she hadn’t thought it was important to disclose the information. In her mind, what good would it have done? And, really, nothing she had told him would help the current case. However, she would do the right thing and come forward—another reason she was the woman he had fallen madly in love with.

  “Nice of you to join us,” Brett said with his eyebrows raised. “I mean, it wasn’t like you called the meeting or that we have a gruesome murder case on our hands.”

  Obviously, they all were feeling the stress. They hadn’t made much headway on this case, and it felt like they were just spinning their wheels. They needed a break in this case, and they needed it fast.

  “You know, Albrecht, you can get bent. It’s not like I haven’t been busy,” Caleb said, not unkindly. Albrecht smirked at him and nodded his head, acknowledging the retort was meant to lighten the mood.

  “All right, now that you’re here, we can start the meeting. Please tell me that someone has some news for me to help stop this nightmare,” Bob said, cutting into the conversation.

  “I have some information for everyone. Like I told you on the phone, Kara is here to give a statement. It does not appear it’ll help us at all on this case. But it still needs to be brought to light. I am disclosing this for her at her request so I would appreciate some leniency in that regard,” he said, looking at DA Gloria Finnegan who was seated next to Bob. Judging by both of their faces, he had piqued their interest.

  “Where is Kara?” Cathy asked.

  “Out with a uniform, writing up her statement. But she wanted me to fill you in. Today has been trying, on many levels.”

  “Go on,” Gloria said.

  “She finally confided in Ethan and me this morning about why she left town. This isn’t easy for her to talk about, so I told her I would do it. I’m sure most of you are aware that she has been estranged from the governor and his wife for some time.” He paused and looked at all the faces around the table. Taking a deep breath because he still could hardly believe what he had just found out, he continued. “Well, it appears that they are the reason we are unable to find any evidence.”

  “What do you mean?” Bob asked cautiously.

  “Kara overheard her father talking to Jenkins and Byrnes, two officers at this precinct. He was paying them to deliver all the evidence for her case. Kara watched her father later burn all of the evidence in their fireplace.”

  “You mean to tell me that he paid them so he could destroy evidence? Why would he do that?” Cathy asked.

  “At the time, she thought it was to keep a lid on details. She told me on the way over, she initially thought her father was protecting her from embarrassment. Her abductor was dead, so while it upset her, she didn’t really care.” He paused, and when Bob opened up his mouth to speak, he raised his hand to halt him. “It gets worse.”

  “You mean there’s more?” Bob asked.

  “Unfortunately. It appears that her parents had gotten a ransom request that they hid from the authorities for an undetermined amount of time.”

  “Excuse me?” Gloria blurted out.

  “They had received a ransom request pretty much immediately after she was abducted. Apparently, they decided to drag their feet for a while because they were getting such good press. In her words, her father was climbing the polls, and they figured it wouldn’t hurt to delay. I assume they told her abductor it would take time to get the money together.”

  “What kind of a parent lets their child stay a second longer than necessary in danger?” Cathy said, her voice cracking. Caleb knew it was hard for her to take as a new mother.

  “Apparently, Stanley and Constance Vanderbilt are not candidates for parents of the year. And the worst of it is, her mother convinced her father to wait. He had wanted to pay the ransom right away. But she sold him on it because of the polls. It doesn’t let him off scot free because he went along with it. Though he does seem more remorseful than her mother.”

  “Wait, were they there when she told you?” Gloria asked.

  “Affirmative. We stopped so she could tell Ethan first. Since it involved their parents, I agreed. I was in the room for moral support, so I got to see and hear the whole story firsthand. Her parents came into his room, and it got heated.”

  “How heated?” The question came from Bob.

  “Ethan won’t talk to them; he’s written them off and ordered them out of his room. Kara also told them to leave, Governor Vanderbilt didn’t object, but Constance told Kara it would have been better for everyone if ‘he had done his job right and killed her.'”

  Every single person in the room was shocked. Cathy gasped audibly, and Brett’s mouth was hanging open. Gloria and Bob looked at each other long and hard.

  “Odd choice of words, don’t you think?” Gloria asked
.

  Caleb paused and looked to Gloria. “Now that you mention it, it most certainly is a weird choice of words. I was so focused on Kara, who had threatened to get security or have me escort Constance out of the room, that I didn’t really think about it too much. Maybe I remembered her words wrong; regardless, there has to be something we can do.”

  “You know as well as I do that statute of limitations prohibits me from prosecuting. Even if we had evidence, I couldn’t.”

  “What were the names of the two officers?” Bob asked.

  “Jenkins and Byrnes.”

  “That doesn’t help us one iota.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You haven’t been here long enough to know those two names. I suspect if we ask Ethan, he will tell us those were the files he was looking at the night of his accident. Anyway, they both were killed in the line of duty about eight years ago, right before his partner retired and you were brought on.”

  “That’s convenient,” Brett muttered.

  “Sure is,” Caleb said.

  “Even better, IA had opened files on both of them the week before they were killed in a drug bust gone wrong,” Bob said.

  “Shit. Please tell me I’m not the only one that wants to take down her parents?”

  “I think we can all agree that we would love to see them fall from their ivory tower,” Cathy said.

  “I wonder what would have happened if she would have come forward all those years ago?” Caleb asked.

  “Probably nothing. At least, not right then. If she would have come to us, we wouldn’t have believed her. Those two cops were highly respected up until the night they were killed. Hell, there are still some who are pissed IA opened files on them,” Bob said.

  “What about you? Do you believe they were dirty?” Caleb asked.

  “Who do you think requested they be investigated?”

  His phone was ringing. Not the regular phone; it was the throwaway he had that only two other people knew the number to. He didn’t want to talk to either one right then. But he knew he couldn’t ignore the phone call. One would make him pay if he didn’t and the other one, well, he was as unpredictable as they come. It was getting harder to control him these days.

  While he hated to even consider it, he knew something was going to have to be done on that end. The other man had been useful to have around, but he was becoming more a hindrance than a help these days. While he couldn’t allow anyone to cause any problems for him, could he do what needed to be done? He would have to wait; right now, he was too close to his goal to take on that, too.

  He answered the phone on the sixth ring, which happened to be the last ring before automated voicemail would pick up.

  “What?” he asked, agitated.

  “You can get rid of that tone right now.”

  He was tempted to hang up the phone and go back to monitoring his computer. It made him furious that she’d figured out there were cameras in her house. But he had other ways to keep tabs on her, and she hadn’t had the sense to have them check her car for tracking devices. Of course, she wasn’t driving her car; she was with that fucking detective. Good thing he had put a tracking device on that car, as well. For now, he would allow the conversation to continue, if for no other reason than to find out why he was being forced to listen to the drivel that was bound to be spewed at him.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of this phone call?” he asked, his voice dripping with acid. He would listen, but he didn’t have to play nice.

  “She has to go. She’s starting to become a problem again.”

  “All in good time, all in good time,” he cooed. Fuck if he would let her mess up his plans.

  “No, I want it done today. She needs to be silenced.”

  He had waited a long time to get his hands on Kara; he wasn’t going to let this person dictate the timetable he did it on. He would not rush getting rid of her, he could up the timetable and grab her earlier than he had been planning, but he was going to play with her until he got tired of her and kill her or until she died from the games he had planned for her.

  “Not possible. Unless you want to get us caught. Is that what you want?”

  “You aren’t the one who gets to make the decisions here. I am.”

  “And you going off half-cocked will get us all a nice jail cell. I don’t know about you, but I rather like my freedom to do what I want to do.”

  “I imagine prison would be boring for someone with your tastes.” If he wasn’t mistaken, he was being ridiculed for his sexual preferences.

  “Not going to change my mind that way. We will wait. I won’t be able to pull it off effectively without another day to prepare.”

  “You have twelve hours.”

  “Can’t do it in less than twenty-four.”

  “Fine, twenty-four. But remember, you know that I have the power to bring this house of cards down, right?”

  “Yes. However, you have as much to lose as I do, if not more. So, I suggest you start showing me some respect.”

  “Oh, no one will ever be able to tie me to you.”

  “Are you sure about that?” he asked with malice in his voice and disconnected the call.

  The little bastard had hung up. He would have to go. as well. Too many people were involved and everything needed to be put on ice. But not until after Kara Vanderbilt was taken care of. Not a moment sooner. The little sadist thought he could call the shots. Good thing there were other people on the payroll that had a taste for blood. It would make it easier to get rid of him.

  There was no way that the blood trail would be linked to anybody but him—no way at all. Every possible connection could be severed, disconnected with clean efficiency. Even if he thought he could dictate what they would do next. He wasn’t in control. Never had been and never would be. He was one hundred percent a product of his upbringing and cultivation. It would be best for him to remember who had been given him what he had.

  28

  Caleb left the meeting and headed out to his desk where he’d left Kara. Except she wasn’t sitting at his desk where she’d been filling out a statement with a uniform. Panic filled him as his head whipped around the room. He knew deep down that she wouldn’t leave the building, but he couldn’t contain the panic that was welling up inside him. He hurried into the hallway and ran into Brad O’Grady, one of the street cops.

  “O’Grady, have you seen Kara?” Brad looked at him slightly confused. “Petite, auburn hair, green eyes?”

  “Real knockout?” Caleb glared at him until he looked at the ground. “Yeah, I saw her a few minutes ago.”

  “Where?”

  “She was over by the breakroom. I think she was getting something to drink.”

  Caleb practically ran to the breakroom and breathed a deep sigh of relief when he saw Kara seated at a table talking to Quinn from A Place to Hope. Both women were smiling; they were so intent on their conversation, they didn’t hear him approach until he was right next to Kara. She tipped her head up at him and turned that megawatt smile on him, and he was officially sunk. But his face must have shown a different story because her smile cracked and then vanished altogether.

  “Caleb, what is it?” she asked, standing up.

  “Nothing, nothing. I just …” Unable to help himself, he pulled her into his arms. “I just got scared when you weren’t at my desk. God, Kara, I freaked out. I…”

  “Hey, look at me.” He looked at her and saw his future in her eyes. “I wouldn’t have left without a police escort; you know that, right?”

  “I do. It just terrified me. I love you too much to lose you.” Her eyes got wide when he spoke the words that had been tearing him apart, trying to get out. Now that he had said them, he felt so much better. But when she didn’t say anything, he instantly regretted his spontaneity. “I’m sorry. I know it’s crazy, I mean we just met. But, I know how I feel…”

  Suddenly, her mouth was on his, effectively cutting off any further words that would have es
caped the babbling brook that his mouth had become. She kissed him with a fierce intensity. He could taste salt, and when he broke from the kiss and looked at her, he saw that her cheeks were stained with tears.

  “Kara…” She placed her fingers on his mouth and smiled.

  “I love you, too, Caleb Montgomery; to hell with it being too soon. If I’ve learned something in the last few days, it’s that life is meant to be lived, and I wasn’t. I won’t hide my feelings, not when I know how I feel.”

  A smile of relief broke out on his face, and he kissed her nose. He was lost in her eyes when someone cleared their throat. Blinking, he came back to reality and remembered where they were. Right. The breakroom of the police station. He looked around the room and saw no less than six of his co-workers with shit eating grins on their faces and Quinn sitting at the table, also with a smile on her face. At least she was attempting to hide the smile; the officers in the room certainly weren’t. Quinn stood to leave.

  “You two should really get a room. In the meantime, I need to go cool off. Because that was five-alarm hot.” She pretended to fan herself as she touched Kara’s shoulder and nodded at the officers who were all lounging in the office. Strangely, they all got up and left without a word. Not a dig, not a cat call, nothing.

  “She didn’t need to leave. Sorry I interrupted you both; you looked pretty intense when I walked in.”

  “That’s okay, we were done, anyway. And who am I to say no to a kiss like that?”

  “You were the one doing the kissing. In front of an audience, too.”

  “Semantics. You know you wanted to kiss me,” she said flirtatiously.

  “Babe, I always want to kiss you. I will never not want to kiss you. Even if you make me angry, those lips are just meant to be kissed. By me, only me,” he said softly and kissed her again, not caring if someone walked in. The kiss quickly got out of hand and was one step away from getting them an indecent exposure citation when Kara broke from him. His lips instantly felt lost when the contact was broken.